The economic pressures which guide media corporations towards greater efficiency, profitability and growth, require strong regulation to keep them subordinated to the needs of a democratic society: free speech and diverse viewpoints in an "open marketplace of ideas." Unfortunately, regulatory authority is often weakened or "captured" as big business influences policymakers. One of the results is media consolidation, or the anti-democratic tendency towards oligopoly in local and national media markets.

The rise of a Canadian media mogul: a Conrad Black timeline

1944: Conrad Moffat Black born Aug. 25 in Montreal to George Montegu, who helped build E.P. Taylor's Canadian Breweries into the largest brewer in North America, and Jean Elizabeth Riley, of Winnipeg's prominent Riley clan.

1959: Black is expelled from Upper Canada College, the most prestigious English-language prep school in Canada, for selling exam papers to fellow students. After being expelled for insubordinate behaviour at Trinity College School, Black ultimately graduates from Thornton Hall.

1965: Black graduates with B.A. in history from Carleton University, Ottawa.

1966: Black acquires and is sole employee of his first newspaper, the Eastern Townships Advertiser, which serves a region southeast of Montreal populated by well-heeled cottagers and gentlemen farmers.

1969: With partners David Radler and Peter White, Black acquires the Sherbrooke (Que.) Record, a money-losing daily newspaper, for $20,000.

1971: After flipping Record at a substantial profit, Black, Radler and White accumulate about a dozen small dailies under the royal-sounding moniker Sterling Newspapers Ltd. All but one of the papers is in B.C, the exception in P.E.I., prompting Sterling partners to joke they have created a "national" chain.

1973: Black graduates with M.A. in history from McGill University, Montreal.

1976: Black's parents die 10 days apart in June. Based on the family's holding in investment companies Ravelston Corp. Ltd. and Argus Corp. Ltd., Black joins the boards of the two firms. Black publishes his first book, Duplessis, a laudatory biography of controversial former Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis.

1978: Astonishing the Canadian business establishment, Black, at the tender age of 33, in May acquires control of Argus Corp. Ltd., a storied conglomerate founded in 1945 by tycoon E.P. Taylor and others, including John "Bud" McDougald and Black's father, George Black. By 1978, Argus is one of Canada's largest collections of familiar corporate names, including global farm-machinery giant Massey-Ferguson Ltd., Dominion Stores Ltd. (then Canada's largest grocery chain), Standard Broadcasting (operator of leading Toronto radio station CFRB and its English-language Montreal counterpart, CJAD), forest- products giant Domtar Inc., and gold miner Hollinger Mines, among other assets. In July, Black marries Shirley Walters. They will have two sons and a daughter.

1979: Black fails in joint bid with partners including John Bassett to acquire the Toronto Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper and leading financial title, losing the prize to rival bidder Ken Thomson.

1980: Black quits as chairman of a struggling Massey-Ferguson, donating Argus's M-F shares to its employee union. Over the next few years, Argus sheds most of its assets, reinvesting the proceeds in newspapers.

1983: In what is believed to be the first of his many libel suits, Black sues U.S. society magazine Town & Country over an allegedly defamatory article by Canadian journalist and Black biographer Peter C. Newman. The magazine issues a clarification and apology. As with all of Black's subsequent libel actions, most of which are settled out of court, the case is not tested in a courtroom.

1985: Black acquires control of Britain's Daily Telegraph, one of the world's largest English-language newspapers. Black will oversee the Telegraph for almost 20 years. Works with Aussie tycoon Kerry Packer to win government approval for takeover of the Fairfax chain of quality dailies, including the Melbourne Age and Sydney Morning Herald. Ultimately retreats from Down Under when Canberra refuses to relax foreign ownership restrictions on media properties.

1989: Globe and Mail settles a libel suit brought against it by Black over a profile of him two years earlier, publishing a lengthy apology as part of an out-of-court settlement.

1990: Canadian division of U.K-based Penguin Books agrees to destroy 6,200 copies of Canadian-authored Who's Money Is It Anyway? The Showdown on Pensions, in response to a libel suit brought against it by Black over passages in the book dealing with his dispute over pension benefits of Dominion Stores Ltd. employees.

1992: After the finalization of his divorce from Joanna Black (who changed her name from Shirley in 1990), Black marries journalist Barbara Amiel in July. Of his interest in Amiel, then a columnist for the London Times, Black later writes: "She shortly became the summit of my most ardent and uncompromising desires."

1993: Black publishes his second book, a memoir titled Conrad Black: A Life In Progress.

1994: Hollinger International (HI), based in Chicago and to become repository of most of Black's newspaper assets worldwide, goes public in the United States. This is a fateful move, exposing Black's empire to America's more rigorous regulatory regime and its more aggressive institutional shareholders. HI is controlled by Toronto-based Hollinger Inc., itself controlled by Ravelston Corp. Ltd., one of Black's personal holding companies.

1996: Gains control of Southam newspaper chain, Canada's largest, owner of the leading dailies in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Montreal. The transaction results in Black's control of 59 of Canada's 105 dailies. Together with his acquisitions of leading Quebec and Saskatchewan dailies, Black emerges with 55 per cent of Canadian daily circulation - the largest concentration of daily newspaper circulation in any G-8 nation. Additional purchases of scores of small-town U.S. dailies; the Chicago Sun-Times, Black's only substantial U.S. paper; the Jerusalem Post, Israel's leading English-language daily; Canada's venerable Saturday Night general-interest magazine, British current affairs journals The Spectator and Encounter, and many trade magazines see Black reach his zenith of 500+ publications worldwide by the late-1990s — the world's third-largest newspaper group, and the largest print-only media operation.

1998: Black acquires the century-old Financial Post as a platform for his October launch of the National Post, Canada's second national newspaper, vowing to drive a "silver stake" through the rival national Globe and Mail and capture circulation from what he regards as the "left-lib" Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily. Nine years later, the Post ranks fifth among Toronto's six English-language dailies and has bled more than $200 million worth of red ink.

August 1999: Black sues Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, seeking $25,000 in damages and a reversal of Chrétien's instruction to Elizabeth II not to appoint Black to the British House of Lords. Chrétien has cited an 80-year-old parliamentary resolution that requests the British monarch not to confer titles on Canadian citizens. Black's lawsuit fails in court and on appeal.

2000: His enterprise tottering with debt, and correctly sensing that newspaper valuations have hit their peak, Black abruptly sells most of his Canadian newspapers to the Winnipeg-based Asper family's CanWest Global Communications Inc. In the transaction, which will figure prominently in the 2005 indictment of Black and associates, Hollinger International sells 13 major Canadian dailies, 136 smaller Canadian papers and a 50% stake in the National Post for $3.2 billion (Cdn.). Black soon sells HI's remaining stake in the Post to CanWest.

2001: Black renounces his Canadian citizenship, and is inducted into the British House of Lords as Lord Black of Crossharbour, named for a public transit stop near Canary Wharf. He becomes the third Canadian so honoured, after Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aiken) and Lord Thomson (Roy Thomson).

May 19, 2003: New York-based investment firm Tweedy Browne Co., which has an 18% stake in Hollinger International, sends a "demand letter" to HI, also filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, insisting that HI probe what it alleges to be excessive payments to Black and Radler, and demands "disgorgement" of the funds paid. This action will later be regarded as the catalyst by which Black eventually loses his empire and is indicted on criminal charges.

May 22, 2003: Reacting to agitation from Tweedy Browne and other U.S. institutional shareholders, Hollinger International Inc. (HI), still controlled by Black, says it will create a special committee of HI directors to probe "non-compete" payments paid to Black, Radler and other HI partners that Tweedy Browne and other critics complain should have been paid to HI and not Black, Radler, their associates and firms controlled by Black upon the sale of Southam and other HI newspaper.

Nov. 17, 2003: Black resigns under board pressure as CEO of Hollinger International, centerpiece of his empire and owner of the Daily Telegraph, Chicago Sun-Times, Jerusalem Post, and David Radler quits as president and chief operating officer, after HI's special committee reports that $32.15 million (U.S.) in unauthorized payments were made by HI, mostly to Black, Radler and HI controlling shareholder Hollinger Inc. Black, Radler and other HI officers agree to repay several million each to the company. In a next-day press scrum after an appearance at a Toronto bookstore to promote his newly published biography of Franklin Roosevelt, Black says: "All of you fellows who wrote today that I'm finished may not have it right, you know." Reflecting on the jump in HI's share price on news he had been removed as CEO, Black adds: "I made 50 million bucks yesterday. That's a flameout I could get used to."

Dec. 22, 2003. Black takes the Fifth Amendment rather than answer the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's questions about HI's accounting and compensation practices.

Jan. 18, 2004: Black is ousted as chairman of HI. His own former company then launches a $200-million (U.S.) lawsuit against Black, Radler, Ravelston and Hollinger Inc., asserting they have caused HI to endure years of "unreasonable and unjustifiable fees."

2004: Blindsiding the HI board, Black announces he has sold indirect control of HI by selling parent Hollinger Inc. to Scotland's reclusive billionaire Barclay twins, Sir David and Sir Frederick, for $600 million (U.S.).

Feb. 13, 2004: Black launches an $850-million (Cdn.) defamation suit against certain HI directors and advisors, claiming that "false and malicious representations" of him have caused Black to be "pilloried and mocked mercilessly in the media," making him a "social leper" and a "loathsome laughingstock."

Feb. 26, 2004: Vice Chancellor Leo Strine of the Delaware Chancery Court in Wilmington blocks Black's proposed sale of Hollinger Inc. to the Barclays, concluding that Black "breached his fiduciary and contractual duties [at HI] persistently and seriously." Strine is principally annoyed that Black acted behind the back of the HI board, after promising to cooperate with it in the sale of the company. In his published judgment, Strine describes Black as "cunning and calculated" and writes that he found Black's courtroom testimony "evasive and unreliable" and that his explanations of his motives "did not have the ring of truth." Responding to the Strine-decision setback, Black tells the London Times: "I assume the sadistic fascination with my life will eventually come to an end."

March 8, 2004: Black is ousted as chairman of his most prized possession, the Daily Telegraph.

March 2004: Barbara Amiel Black resigns as vice-president, editorial, at Hollinger International rather than comply with a request from HI's special board committee to explain what work she performed to earn her $276,000 in 2002 compensation.

Apr. 30, 2004: HI, now controlled by directors hostile to Black, raises the stakes in its legal action against the HI founder, boosting its $200-million (U.S.) lawsuit to a $1.25-billion (U.S.) claim against Black and other former officers for alleged racketeering.

May 2004: Barbara Amiel Black is dropped as columnist at the Daily Telegraph after a 10-year stint, because, the paper explains, she has been added as a defendant to HI's lawsuit against Black, et al.

June 22, 2004: HI sells the Telegraph to the Barclay brothers for $1.65 billion (U.S.).

Aug. 20, 2004: Black to shed his last public company directorship, at Sotheby's Holdings Inc., by not standing for re-election at its next annual meeting May 7.

Aug. 31, 2004: In the 513-page "Breeden Report," so named after its author, Richard Breeden, a former SEC chief named special monitor of HI by the SEC, the three-member HI board committee probing the conduct of Black and other former HI officers accuse them of having run a "corporate kleptocracy" at HI. "This story is about how Hollinger [International] was systematically manipulated and used by its controlling shareholders for their sole benefit, and in a manner that violated every concept of fiduciary duty," the report says. Later in the report, the special committee writes: "Behind a constant stream of bombast regarding their accomplishments as self-described 'proprietors', Black and Radler made it their business to line their pockets at the expense of Hollinger almost every day, in almost every way they could devise...at Hollinger, Black as both CEO and controlling shareholder, together with his associates, created an entity in which ethical corruption was a defining characteristic of the leadership team." Of the controversial "non-compete" payments collected by Black, et al, from the sale of HI assets, the Breeden Report says: "These payments were so far off normal practice that it is no wonder Black described them in a letter to Radler as 'the splendid conveyance of the non-competition agreements from which you and I profited so well'..." Breeden surfaced another Black internal statement: "It's my company, and I'll decide when and what to tell the board."

September 10, 2004: Black files a libel suit against Toronto Life magazine, author Robert Mason Lee and illustrator Barry Blitt for $2.1 million in Ontario Superior Court over an article in the magazine's July issue, entitled, "A Toast to Lord Black on His Arrival in Hell," Black says the article depicts him as "so irredeemably evil that he should be consigned to hell." The lawsuit is settled in February 2004 with Toronto Life's publication of a one-paragraph apology.

Oct. 1, 2004. Black responds to the "Breeden Report" by suing the HI special committee for $1.1 billion (Cdn.), claiming defamation in the largest libel suit in Canadian history.

Nov. 15, 2004: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission files civil fraud charges against Black and Radler. The case is held in abeyance until resolution of the criminal indictment against Black, et al.

March 29, 2005: Hollinger Inc., the second Black-created firm to turn against him, files a $635-million (Cdn.) lawsuit against Black and other Hollinger Inc. executives insisting they acted in "bad faith."

May 20, 2005: Black is captured on security cameras removing 13 boxes from Hollinger Inc.'s 10 Toronto St. headquarters, breaching a ruling he not remove materials that may be subject to a legal inquiry. Black does not return the boxes for several days, and what was done with their contents during that time is not known. This will form the basis of the obstruction of justice counts in the criminal indictment of Black, et al.

Sept. 20, 2005: Radler pleads guilty to one count of mail fraud in exchange for a reduced sentence of 29 months in return for his cooperation with prosecutors.

2005: Black sells his Cottesmore Gardens, London, mansion for $L13.1 million, purchased in 1992 for L3.5 million from disgraced Australian tycoon Alan Bond.

Oct. 7, 2005: At the sale closing of Black's Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan, FBI agents intrude and seize the $8.9 million (U.S.) Black expected to collect on the transaction.

Nov. 16, 2005: Black serves biographer Peter C. Newman with a $2-million (Cdn.) defamation suit over references to Black and Amiel in Newman's 2004 memoir, Here Be Dragons. The suit is settled in January 2006 with "statement of regret" issued by Newman.

Nov. 17, 2005: Black is charged with eight counts of mail fraud and wire fraud by U.S. prosecutors. Also included in the indictment are former HI executives John Boultbee and Peter Atkinson, and Kipnis faces new charges. In the following days, Kipnis, Black, Atkinson and Boultbee plead not guilty. Black's response: "There's no truth or substance whatsoever to these charges. This has been one massive smear job from A to Z, and it will have a surprise ending...a complete vindication of the defendants, and exposure of their persecutors."

Dec. 15, 2005: Black is hit with four additional charges — one count each of racketeering, money laundering, wire fraud and obstruction of justice — the latter related to Black's removal of boxes from 10 Toronto St. If found guilty on all counts, Black, 61, faces 95 years' imprisonment, $7 million (U.S.) in fines, and forfeiture of more than $92 million (U.S.) in funds that prosecutors allege was improperly gained.

Dec. 16, 2005: In a Chicago court appearance, Black pleads not guilty and is released on a $20-million (U.S.) bond.

Sept. 8, 2006: Black is arraigned in Chicago on new criminal charges for tax evasion.

September 15, 2006: Black's legal team attempts to have most of the U.S. criminal case thrown out, arguing that the prosecution is depicting him as a plutocrat, making a fair trial impossible. It their motion filed in the Chicago court, Black's lawyers say that "Since Biblical times, and probably before, the wealthy have been envied and condemned..." Black's lawyers seek to have aspects of Black's lifestyle and social standing stricken from the indictment against him, including reference to Black's "membership in the House of Lords," his multiple (four) residences and the "lavish fashion" in which some are decorated, to the servant's living quarters therein, and to the surprise party Black threw for his wife, Barbara Amiel Black, and 80 guests at La Grenouille. The motion states, "A typical juror does not reside in more than one residence, employ servants or a chauffeur, enjoy lavish furniture, or host expensive parties....Allegations threatening to engender class-based prejudice, identified above, should be stricken." On Dec. 21, Judge Amy St. Eve denies the motion.

Sept. 15, 2006: Black reveals he has begun the process of regaining his Canadian citizenship. On Sept. 25, Black elaborates that he is pursuing the "normal channels" for regaining his citizenship, and that "I have settled into my new life as a freedom fighter."

December 2006: Black submits his fourth book, a biography of Richard Nixon, to his publisher.

January 2007: Ravelston, the third Black company to turn against him, says it will plead guilty and cooperate with the Chicago prosecutors. Ravelston, which sits at the apex of holding companies by which Black controlled his empire, is now in receivership. Ravelston joins Hollinger International and Hollinger Inc., the latter two under new management, as allies of the prosecution.

Feb. 19, 2007: Black files a $11-million (Cdn.) libel suit against British author Tom Bower for alleged defamatory passages in Bower's 2006 tell-all Black biography, whose Canadian title is Conrad & Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge. Black has already opined on the book in a British newspaper op-ed essay, writing that Bower's "keyhole, smut-mongering side-piece portrayal of my wife as a man-eating sex maniac prior to her marriage to me is disgusting."

Mar. 6, 2007: U.S. federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who brought the criminal indictment against Black and oversees the four-person team that will make the government's case against Black, scores a coup with the conviction of I. Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, 56, former chief of staff to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and for decades one of Washington's most prominent political figures, for lying to a grand jury and FBI agents probing the leak of the identity of a C.I.A. operative in 2003.

March 14, 2007: Jury selection to begin in U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. About 80 lawyers are involved in the case; approximately 11,000 company e-mails have been filed as evidence; and some 300 journalists are expected to cover the case, whose duration is estimated at three months.

The media's job is to interest the public in the public interest. -John Dewey

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